Grit Lab Report

Hi Farheen,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 1: I’m equally interested in pretty much everything but not especially committed to any one interest .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were benevolence, achievement, and self-direction.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.

You said your top three talents were verbal, social, and analytic.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Become comfortable with casing .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said I get a job! .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said I am scared to start .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I finish classes, I will prepare for my interview .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in school .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt grateful when receiving critical feedback, and grateful when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel HAPPY .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

Context matters!
We need to really hone in on the spontaneous things that make us OBSESSED
Pick a career that fits!
As Penn Students, we crave well structured environments but careers are often ill structured
effective feedback is future oriented, motivating & only works when the recipient is proactive
Changing your situation is the best way to form good habits, which lead to good self control!
Mentors are important!
Being a team player involves empathy!

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Ivy Deng
Farheen! Sweetest, most thoughtful girl in the world! I appreciate how you are a great listener. You always make people feel heard. You always give thoughtful responses to people. You make each member feel valued. You are also very insightful. I can always trust you to know what to say in the right times. Your discovery project was so heartwarming. It inspired me to cook more and listen more. You introduced me to her supper club. I recommended your dinner idea to my club the other day to implement.
Isobel Glass
Dear Farheen, I am so grateful to have been in Grit Lab with you and to have been conversation partners with you for the semester. Our infamous Grit Lab Group would not be the same without you. You bring such a warm infectious energy and I am really grateful for all of your sharing and listening. You have poise and kindness in absolutely everything you do and bring our group together. I appreciate your thoughtful perspective on your own career path, you are honest and reflective in how you have approached different experiences. I am so excited for your future and jealous of those who will get to spend time with you - they are really lucky! In terms of your Discovery Project - it was amazing! It was obvious how much time you put into your project and how passionate you became about your supper parties by the end of it. I love how you incorporated different elements of our class structure into your project - the post supper survey you had your participants complete was especially thoughtful. Overall, you managed to pursue a passion project in a way that brought joy to other people's lives too - this perfectly encapsulates who you are as a person. Great work and I have also now been inspired to maybe attempt to have a supper party even half as beautiful as yours!
Jules Bach
Farheen has been a remarkable presence in our Grit Lab group, demonstrating outstanding leadership and communication skills. Her ability to guide the team with clarity and empathy has significantly enhanced our collaborative efforts, and her skill in articulating complex ideas has greatly contributed to our collective understanding and progress. Farheen's discovery project was particularly memorable for its unique approach to food as a medium for human connection. She beautifully tied together culinary experiences with the art of building relationships, showcasing how meals can be more than just nourishment; they can be a profound way to connect with others. Her idea of hosting dinner receptions as a means of fostering community and understanding left a lasting impression on me. Thank you Farheen! (PS: Please invite us to one of your parties!!)

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.